


Beacon

by lionessvalenti



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Darkness, Gen, ToT: Monster Mash, Trick or Treat: Trick, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-25 22:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12542720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/pseuds/lionessvalenti
Summary: Finn and Rey come upon an abandoned space station with an active distress beacon, but the space station isn't in distress. Not anymore.





	Beacon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambiguously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/gifts).



The distress beacon had called them there, but when they arrived, it was clear the distress was gone. The only thing left was a silent, empty space station. It was small, probably one carrying a crew of a few hundred. It moved slowly, perhaps having drifted for years, further and further into the dark recesses of the galaxy until they heard the beacon.

Finn took a shuddering breath as he looked at it. He'd been a lot of unsavory places, but this one gave him the _creeps_. "Should we go?"

Rey looked down at the scan. "It says there's no signs of life, but..."

"The Force?" Finn asked. There were things all the scans in the universe couldn't tell you, and Rey had access to all of it. She trusted the Force, and he trusted her.

She nodded. "There's something there. Maybe there's a droid stranded there. That wouldn't show up on the scan as a sign of life."

R2-D2 beeped indignantly.

"No, no, you're right," Rey replied, and it wasn't the last time Finn was annoyed that he couldn't speak droid. "I think we should board. It could be nothing, and then we'll come back."

Finn's eyes widened. "And what if it's not nothing?"

She touched the lightsaber on her hip. "You have a blaster." She knelt in front of R2. "You stay here. If things go sideways, you'll need to go back for us, all right?"

R2 beeped loudly and teetered from side to side.

"How exactly do you think things are going to go sideways?" Finn asked. His gaze at turned from Rey, and back to the darkened space station.

Rey looked up at him, her eyes nearly as wide as his. She shrugged. "I don't know."

"Well, it won't be the first bad idea we've ever had."

* * *

The connecting blast doors to the space station opened, sending a rush of cold air into the Falcon. The air was breathable, but it was stale and had a... smell. It was like body odor mixed with rotted meat, and sick. Rey seemed to hold back a dry heave, and even Finn pulled a face.

Once the shock of the smell had faded, Finn looked down the hall into the deep darkness. Even the lights from behind them seemed to do nothing against it.

"Do you think we should...?" Finn asked, trying to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but no amount of staring was making a difference. Maybe there was nothing to see.

"Right." Rey pulled the lightsaber from its holster. It illuminated the hall a few feet in front of them. She started forward.

"I was thinking close the doors and turn away, but sure, that works too," Finn muttered. He rested his hand on his blaster and followed her down the hall.

The space station was like a maze of halls and rooms. There were Aurebesh signs directing to the control room, the mess hall, and toward the bunks. Rey seemed to be leading them toward the control room, and he trusted that she could recount all the turns she was making to get them back to safety.

The lightsaber provided enough light to walk by, like a flaming torch in a cave. Finn stayed close to Rey and the light. When she stopped, Finn stumbled into her. She held up her hand to keep him from apologizing or even saying a word.

"Did you hear that?" she asked.

Finn's energy had been dedicated to seeing beyond the light. He shook his head. "What was it?"

"Like a... moan? Or a grunt?"

"Was it a moan or a grunt?"

"I don't know!"

Finn took a deep breath, and hesitated before he let it out. "Rey, is the smell getting worse?"

She sniffed loudly. "A little bit?"

Pulling the blaster from its holster, Finn heard the noise Rey had been talking about. Definitely a moan, along with the sound of shuffling. It sounded nothing like a droid. If there wasn't any life on the ship, then what was it?

"We should go back." Finn said.

Rey's shoulders tightened. "If there's something dangerous on this station, we need to shut down the beacon. We need to keep anyone else from finding it."

In theory, Finn understood she was right. On instinct, he wanted to turn and bolt back to the Falcon. However, he would need her light and her guided memory back to the ship, so there was nothing he could do but keep following her.

There was another moan, this one echoing against the walls of the space station. Finn glanced up, and they were right under a vent. He nudged Rey with his elbow and she nodded up at it. She nodded, too. The sound could be coming from anywhere. It didn't mean that the source of it was close.

"The control room," Rey said, pointing to the room at the end of the hall.

Another shuffling noise brought Finn's attention to the vent over their heads. As Rey moved toward the door and Finn stayed in place, the light from the saber faded, but he couldn't miss the six pairs of glowing eyes that stared down at him. One red slash of a mouth opened, revealing rows of razor sharp teeth.

"Rey..." Finn said, backing up slowly toward her.

"What?" She had her hand on the door knob, and as she turned, the vent clattered to the floor and several of the creatures crawled out from the hole and onto the ceiling. The rotted meat smell intensified, almost thrumming throughout the hall. One creature dropped on the floor and approached them with its open, gaping mouth.

"Control room, control room," Finn said, pushing back against Rey. She slammed the door knob, and they both stumbled into the control room. The lightsaber went out as they fell the ground, cloaking them in darkness. Finn kicked the door close.

"What _was_ that?" Rey asked. She turned on the lightsaber again to give them more light.

"I don't -- I don't know." Finn took a shuddering breath. He looked up at the ceiling, seeing all the large, creature-sized vents above them. It wouldn't take long for the them to get in. "Let's shut off the beacon and go."

Rey scrambled to her feet and headed to the control panel. It was completely dark, except for one flashing green light. She switched it off. She turned back to Finn. "That was the easy part."

"How are we going to get out of here?" Finn asked.

She waved her lightsaber around in a _how do you think_ motion.

"Right." Finn got up and retrieved his blaster from his hip. He reached for the doorknob and glanced back at Rey. She nodded.

He flung open the door and found the hallway empty. He glanced back at Rey. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"Let's get out of here," she replied.

They started back down the hall together, Rey in the front, and Finn walking backwards behind her. The shuffling sound started again, slowly getting closer. Finn's pulse pounded in his ears, until he could barely hear anything else. 

"Finn!" Rey screamed, and he spun around to see more than a dozen creatures crawling out of the ceiling vent in front of her. One of the creatures lunged for Rey, mouth open wide, and she sliced off its head with her lightsaber. It fell to the ground, the stench stronger than it had ever been. Other creatures surrounded the body and began to devour its flesh.

"Run!" Finn shouted, and they both ran as fast they could throughout the space station's maze.

"R2!" Rey shouted into the comm device on her wrist. "R2, we're coming and it's not safe! If anyone besides us comes, shut the blast doors!" Beeping confirmed that he'd heard the message.

"Shut the doors?" Finn hollered at her. He fired his blaster at the creature that was following them. It wasn't a kill shot, but the scream that followed told Finn he hadn't missed. "Are you crazy? How are we supposed to get in?"

Rey stopped to plant her feet and cut down another creature that had jumped in front of them. Behind them more vents clattered to the ground. "We'll figure it out!" she called back to him.

They kept running. Finn turned a corner, and the hall was packed with creatures, each one of them with their mouths open wide, teeth dripping. He stumbled back and took the other corner, to find one a few. He grabbed Rey by the arm and pulled her down the second hall.

"But that's not the way!" she said.

"Doesn't matter," Finn replied, shooting his blaster at the creatures in front of him. "You're going to have Force our way out of here."

Rey stopped and closed her eyes.

"I didn't mean right now!"

She held up her hand to silence him. The only sound was their breathing, mirroring each other with each heaving breath. Her eyes opened, and she pushed the lightsaber into his hand. "Come on." She jumped up, grabbing onto one of the opened vents and pulling herself up.

"Wait, no, that's where they live!" Finn called after her.

"Except they're not in there. They're looking for us." Rey leaned halfway out of the vent and held her hand out to him.

"I can't believe this," he muttered, but he handed her the lightsaber, and then reached out for her hand. She might be able to make an eight foot vertical leap, but he didn't have the same abilities.

Rey began to pull him up, and Finn felt something jerk his leg back down. He glanced over his shoulder at two creatures pulling him with long fingers wrapped around his leg. "No!"

The lightsaber went out, plunging them into darkness.

"Rey!" Finn shouted, still trying to pull against the creatures. They weren't that strong, just the two of them, but what happened when more arrived? With the light out, how many could be coming?

The pulling stopped and Finn was suddenly pulled up into the vent. The lightsaber came back on in Rey's hand.

"What did you do?" he asked.

"I... got rid of them," she replied, her eyes wide, and her face sweatier than it had been before. He knew better than to ask her how. "This way."

There wasn't enough room in the vent to crawl and manage a deadly weapon that would certainly burn right through the metal ventilation system, so they crawled in darkness, with the Force guiding Rey's way.

Or at least Finn hoped so.

And then, Finn saw the light. He grabbed Rey by the ankle. "It's the Falcon!"

Rey kicked out the vent, calling for R2-D2 to open the doors for them. She dropped to the floor, and Finn stumbled out after her. He landed hard on his ankle, but it didn't feel strained. Just sore.

The doors to the Falcon opened just as the room began to fill with creatures. Finn took one last look over his shoulder as he ran for the door. "Shut the doors!" he shouted, barely even through them.

R2 beeped affirmatively, and the doors began to close. Finn shot at a few of the creatures that were trying to get through before the doors closed, sealing them off. He looked dwon at R2 and grinned. "Good job."

R2 beeped back at him, and Finn was pretty sure he was saying you're welcome. Finn gave the droid an affectionate pat and started for the cockpit, where Rey was making a hasty exit from the space station. Once they were away, Rey slumped back into her seat.

"That was... a bad idea, you were right."

Finn laughed as she stumbled down in the seat next to her. "I'm not gonna say I told you so, but... yeah, I was right. A bunch of undead killing machines."

"I guess I still need to learn what's telling me to come there because it's good, and what's telling me to come there because it's bad."

"Hey." Finn reached over and took her hand. "It's good that you're listening at all. You care. That's what's important."

Rey smiled weakly.

Neither of them noticed the distress beacon beeping, calling out to its next victim.


End file.
